arxivcs.LGq-fin.RMq-fin.ST2026-06-29
Heads, Not Backbones: Output Heads Dominate Architectures on Fat-Tailed Returns
In a deep forecasting pipeline for fat-tailed financial returns at short horizons, which matters more - the backbone architecture or the output head? We compare four modern backbones (TimesNet, DLinear, N-BEATS, iTransformer) under three output heads: a point head, a single-Gauss…